It was a good time to be alive. Nebuchanezzer was king and I was his youngest son, Amechdel, or "Angel." I was just fourteen, but I had already learned the central concept of life, "It's good to be the king, but if you can't be king-and with thirteen older sons, even my mother, Amytis, had no expectations there-it's almost as good to be royalty."

My needs were met with remarkable alacrity. I had but to ask. The food was excellent, of course his Royal Highness insisted on that. The royal library was pretty cool too, as long as Amel-Marduk wasn't around. He was first-born and loved to lord it over us. Better were the Hanging Gardens where I could run and play to my heart's content. But best of all was the market.

Babylon had to have the biggest market in the entire world. Where the rest of Babylon had streets a hundred cubits wide, wide enough for Dad's armies to march thirty abreast, the market was chock full of booths leaving labyrinthine and meandering pathways, sometimes barely wide enough for two to pass. No two booths were alike. Strange and amazing colors, aromas and objects were everywhere. Rugs from Persia lay next to racks of spices. Vegetables from the outlying farms were displayed next to jewels and trinkets from the mysterious East. What better place for games like hide and seek?

It was during such a game that I found it at a trinket stand. I had left Hammad with a servant so he would not bark and give me away. Running the stand was a beady-eyed Sumarian with no teeth and a missing left hand-a sure sign that he had been a rather poor thief in the past. You could see his eyes narrow and calculations go through his head as he saw me in my gold brocaded vest and pantaloons. Then he turned and slowly walked back to his display, gesturing me to follow. It was as good a place to hide as any, maybe even better than some, since it provided more to a common taste as so was sufficiently different to be an unlikely place to find one of my refinement.

"Young master. Welcome to my humble establishment. What may I display for you this fine day?"

"Nothing. We are playing hide and seek and I am looking for someplace to hide."

"Well, come right in young master. Hide in my tent. And feel free to examine my merchandise while you are there."

"Thank you. I shall." With that I pushed past him and entered the tent just behind his table of worn wares. The inside was even filthier than that outside if that was possible-and more crowded. Though I had refused to admit it, something called to me. My game of "Hide and Seek" forgotten, I moved through the tent in a daze; my fingers running lightly over object after object as I searched for something-something that kept eluding me.

At the back of the tent, buried amongst a pile of used and soot covered lamps, I found it. It was a lamp just like all the others in the pile; a scruffy thing, green with tarnish and lacking any jewels that might dazzle the eye or appeal to the baser interests of the less informed. Yet it drew me, drew me as nothing I had ever seen before. When I touched it, I knew I must have it.

I ran to the tent entrance with the lamp clutched tightly in my hand, yet held far enough from my robes to avoid dirtying them. I was certain the proprietor would stop me as soon as I lifted the flap, but for some reason he was nowhere to be seen. In fact, when I turned back to the tent, expecting that I had run past him, the tent was missing, replaced by a livery shop.

I recognized magic when I saw it and we had always been taught that there was no such thing as good magic. Maybe Amel-Marduk had decided, for some arcane reason, to start removing competitors for the throne from the bottom up. Shaken and frightened, I ran all the way home, not stopping until I was buried amongst the silks and pillows of my bed.

I don't remember falling asleep, but I woke later that afternoon with Hammad licking my face. His tail wagged tentatively and his eyes looked worried. It was as if he too were fearful of the sudden entry of something terrible into my life. The lamp was beside me covered by a pillow.

The royal tutors had taught me well and I did not even try to pick it up. The disappearing tent, the obsession to take it, the lamp had to be magic and probably evil magic at that. Instead, I carefully slid away from it and continued sliding away until I was off my bed and on the far side of my room. I was about to call for a servant to find one of the court mages when I realized Hammad was still on my bed. If he moved the wrong way, he might activate the lamp and spill whatever evil resided in the world inside the lamp out into ours.

"Hammad! Stay! Don't move, boy. Stay!"

"Woof!" Hammad wagged his tail happily. He thought I wanted to play with him.

"No Hammad! Stay! Don't move. Don't move." I kept repeating the command as I slowly circled around the bed so I could grab him and pull him off before he could set off whatever magic was in that horrid lamp. I almost made it when Hammad gleefully jumped into my arms, convinced I was playing with him.

I stood there holding Hammad, blithely oblivious to his frantic licking as I held my breath waiting for a cloud of smoke, a wavering in the fabric of reality, a demon floating above a pit of fire or some other sign that the lamp's magic had been invoked.

When nothing happened, I pushed Hammad's face from mine and held him tightly so he wouldn't accidentally do something stupid as I ran to my door and called for a servant.

It was dark out the next time I woke up. I was still in my bed, covered with silks to keep out the night chill, but something was not quite right. As usual, I had been dreaming of houri and other heavenly delights. The curve of one's hip as she danced for me, the deep, dark, sensuous eyes of another who fed me grapes and pomegranates, the bounteous breast of yet another as she carefully cleaned my feet; many such beauties passed before my eyes as they lovingly ministered to my needs. It had to be heaven.

A deep, rumbling voice interrupted my reveries. "You mortals are so predictable," the voice sneered.

"Huh?" I frantically searched for the intruder. The biggest problem with being royalty is the risk of assassination and the first step in avoiding it was to know where a potential assassin might be. However, the room was empty. Only Hammad was there, standing beside me, staring at me, eyes glowing red.

EYES GLOWING RED!

"By the Great Djinn, you humans are slow," Hammad snarled with that same rumbling voice, the owner of which I had been seeking.

"What have you done to Hammad?"

"Just like a mortal to ask the wrong questions," the dog sighed with a sound like the last, wheezing gasp of a dying penitent receiving the King's justice. "Hammad has gone to his reward. I have assumed his form as it is required that a Djinn appear in a manner familiar to the mortal who has summoned him."

"So Hammad has passed beyond?" I was desolate. Hammad had been with me since my birth. He had stood by my crib and protected me. He had been my constant companion as I grew up. He had been my eyes and ears in the palace, helping to protect me from the various intrigues of my brothers and sisters. I had to save him if I could. Screwing up my courage, and realizing that Djinn were the masters of the wish, I asked, "What if I wish him back?"

"Too late foolish mortal," the dog laughed. It sounded like stone grating against stone. "You have used your wishes, each providing you different aspects of your new life. I am only here for the personal satisfaction of observing you as you as you discover the full extent of your errors."

"What do you mean?" I asked, but I already had a suspicion. My body felt fine, so it seemed safe to assume that it had done nothing to me. My room looked the same, the silks and pillows were the same; the hanging rugs were the same.

Hammad, or whatever he had become just laughed and faded away as the sun peaked over the palace walls and shone into my bedroom. Even in the light, everything looked the same. I was the same. The demon Djinn had done nothing but lie, perhaps hoping to trick me into making foolish wishes.

"Amechdela? Angel?" It was my mother Amytis. "Wake up my dear. Your father, King Nebuchanezzer, is meeting with King Pasuad of Persia this afternoon and he wants his entire family to join him. You must rise now so that you can be prepared dear daughter. Pasuad has brought several of his eligible bachelor son with him."

See. Everything is just as it should be, Amechdela thought to herself; but still, there was the faint sound of laughter from a distance.

McKenzie pressed the "enter" key and sent the story off.

Hearing a growl, he turned to see Igor standing behind him snarling.

"What? You were in that story. You know you were. What's the problem?"

"Grrrr."

"Damn! What? You were in there. Who the hell do you think Hammad was?"

"Grrrr."

"If you think you can do better then go right ahead," Mac retorted.

Igor stopped growling. Instead, his eyes began to glow red and Mackenzie Rigby began to see the world swirl and fade from view as he began to fall through a long tunnel, fall toward a light-a distant light…

Amachdela quickly jumped out of bed in response to her mother's call. Running lightly toward the door to hug her mother and start the day, she glanced back and called for her dog, the dog that did everything with her.

"Mackenzie? Come Mackenzie girl. We must prepare."

No one understood why she called the pretty bitch Mackenzie instead of some more common name-like Hammad.

McKenzie was huffing and puffing, but he forced himself to walk, albeit slowly, along the path as Igor romped merrily in the piles of leaves. Janice was coming by tomorrow and he wanted to be able to say that he had exercised, even if it killed him. Otherwise, she'd spend the entire visit haranguing him to take better care of himself. Besides, given the lack of praise for his writing of late from those fickle fools on the web, Janice's insistence that he try to write something more mainstream was actually becoming tempting.

"Stay close, Igor," McKenzie instructed the dog as he dropped the leash and let him run free. They were in a relatively secluded area. Across from the bench McKenzie had chosen was a small field, surrounded by heavily treed hills that curved around three sides leaving a narrow opening just to the left of the bench. The trail continued into a tunnel leading out of the park. It was a perfect place to let Igor stretch is legs a bit-and for Mac to rest.

Taking a dog biscuit from his jacket pocket, Mac called for Igor's attention then threw the biscuit as far as he could toward the distant trees. With a bark and a furiously wagging tail, Igor was off, leaving Mac to his thoughts.

Unfortunately, McKenzie hadn't really been enjoying his thoughts of late. Maybe it was Janice, maybe it was his recent health concerns, or maybe he was just growing up, but Mac kept wondering why he was writing the stuff he was writing. In the past, he'd always insisted that he was just writing science fiction, or at least fantasy. After all, the vast majority of his stories involved magic, space aliens or pseudoscience, which Mac preferred to describe as future science. None of that trashy soft porn for Mac; he was a real writer. But then, why was he writing almost exclusively about men changing into women?

For the tenth time since he'd started this walk, McKenzie blustered about how that was the McGuffin, the hook he was using to draw in this particular group of readers, that the concept had no other appeal to him whatsoever. That answer had been getting less and less acceptable each time the question had arisen. This time it didn't work at all. The niggling little doubt had become a full-fledged torrent. Maybe transgender stories mean more to him than just a venue? Maybe he liked reading the stuff? Maybe he wondered about what it would be like to be a woman? Maybe he wanted to be a woman?

His usual response was to brush these thoughts off with a comment like, "And maybe the moon really is made of green cheese," but it just didn't work this time. This time he was really going to need to think about the questions seriously and give an honest answer. He didn't dress in women's clothes, so that wasn't an explanation. Sex was sex. He didn't visualize himself as the woman having sex, so that wasn't it. He didn't even dream of being a woman or feel like he was trapped in the wrong body, as some described themselves, so that wasn't it either. Wasn't doing it because he was jealous of women and the power he perceived they had in our current society, so what was it? So the answer was he didn't know?

The problem with hard thinking is it doesn't stop when you say you don't know. Probing further, McKenzie realized that there was something he was jealous about. He was jealous about how small women were, how they could demonstrate such amazing flexibility, and grace, in their movements. Maybe he really didn't care about being female. Maybe he just dreamed of being small and flexible and graceful and free of pain and…. But why females? Why did the vast majority of his stories describe men changing into women rather than other smaller, more graceful, more flexible creatures like-porpoises-or cats-or…

Because he wasn't the kind of author who could write a story from the perspective of a non-human creature. He'd never write something like Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull. It was such an obvious answer, so easy to jump on as an explanation. McKenzie was tempted, so tempted. But then, he wondered, why not write about transformations into children-and he was back to square one.

Without even realizing he had done it, McKenzie tossed another dog biscuit to Igor, then another, and then another.

A while later, he realized the dog was standing in front of him barking and he had no more biscuits to throw. A bit surprised, McKenzie ponderously rose to a standing position. Walking over to the dog, he grave Igor a brief, but vigorous petting. Then he bent over and grabbed the dog's leash before slowly heading home.

As he walked, his thoughts were diverted to another topic. There was a strange taste in his mouth. It took a moment to realize what it was-dog biscuit. No wonder igor had been barking at him. He hadn't been throwing the biscuits to the dog; he'd been eating them himself. What better proof that the diet wasn't going that well.